The Lake eBook

lay he admired his executioner. Even her liking
for Mr. Poole became submerged in a tide of suffering,
and of longing, and weakness of spirit. He no
longer had any strength to question her liking for
the minor prophets: there were discrepancies in
everyone, and no doubt there were in him as well as
in her. He had once been very different from
what he was to-day. Once he was an ardent student
in Maynooth, he had been an energetic curate; and now
what was he? Worse still, what was he becoming?
And he allowed his thoughts to dwell on the fact that
every day she was receding from him. He, too,
was receding. All things were receding—­becoming
dimmer.

He piled the grate up with turf, and when the blaze
came leaned over it, warming his hands, asking himself
why she liked Mr. Poole rather than him. For
he no longer tried to conceal from himself the fact
that he loved her. He had played the hypocrite
long enough; he had spoken about her soul, but it
was herself that he wanted. This admission brought
some little relief, but he felt that the relief would
only be temporary. Alas! it was surrender.
It was worse than surrender—­it was abandonment.
He could sink no deeper. But he could; we can
all sink deeper. Now what would the end be?
There is an end to everything; there must be an end
even to humiliation, to self-abasement. It was
Moran over again. Moran was ashamed of his vice,
but he had to accept it, and Father Oliver thought
how much it must have cost his curate to come to tell
him that he wanted to lie drunk for some days in an
outhouse in order to escape for a few days from the
agony of living. ’That is what he called
it, and I, too, would escape from it.’

His thoughts turned suddenly to a poem written by
a peasant in County Cork a hundred years ago to a
woman who inspired a passion that wrecked his mind
altogether in the end. And he wondered if madness
would be the end of his suffering, or if he would
go down to the lake and find rest in it.

’Oh, succour me, dear one, give
me a kiss from thy mouth,
And lift me up to thee from
death,
Or bid them make for me a narrow bed,
a coffin of boards,
In the dark neighbourhood
of the worm and his friends.
My life is not life but death, my voice
is no voice but a wind,
There is no colour in me,
nor life, nor richness, nor health;
But in tears and sorrow and weakness,
without music, without
sport,
without power,
I go into captivity and woe, and in the
pain of my love of thee.’